When All Is Said(61)
Trouble is, son, I’m worried that she mightn’t want me back at all.
* * *
She worked in the main bank over in Duncashel. This of course was when you went into a bank and could engage with living people. These days I refuse to take any more of their time-wasting. When I go in now, I walk past the machines to find the nearest staff member and tell them to get me the manager.
‘Do you have an appointment?’ the newbies ask.
‘Tell Frank to check my bank balance before he decides how long he’ll leave me,’ I like to reply as I take a seat.
’Course, I’ve told him nothing about me having taken well to this online banking that they are at pains to get us all doing. Wasn’t it you that set me up. I had you pestered the first couple of times I tried, crawling my way on to it, marvelling every time that I could see my accounts just like that. By the time you were headed home, I was flying. Not as fast as those young fellas you see around the town, tipping and sliding their way around their gadgets I’m sure, but good enough. I still like to visit Frank, when I have the time that is. Sometimes I just make up stuff for him to do, like cashing a cheque. Once I handed him a cheque for €500 and asked him to cash it and when he handed me the money, I changed my mind and told him he could lodge it. Don’t be feeling sorry for him, he gets paid well enough with my bank charges.
Granted, back in your mother’s day, the bank queues in Duncashel moved fierce slow, but every five or six steps you got to one of the pillars lining the route for a bit of a lean. Then there’d be a pile-up forming behind you, until you pushed yourself away again, freeing it up for the next man. Magnificent building, you wouldn’t remember it. They had it knocked down and rebuilt by the time you toddled along. Thick doors that required your whole weight to open them. High ceilings and red-flecked marble counters. I’d have taken that over a church any day.
So the day I met her, I was stood there in the queue, minding my own business as usual, counting the black tiles of the chequered floor for as far as my eye could concentrate, when I heard this delicious Donegal accent trickle down to me from the counter up ahead. I didn’t lean against another pillar or count another tile after that, but stood to attention, a lot more interested now, trying to get a glimpse of whoever owned it through the heads. I could see her neck clearest of all. Elegant, it was. Like the slope of a scythe. It dipped and bent and stretched with grace. Strong too. I couldn’t wait to stand in front of her, to unleash my charm, which to that point I wasn’t acquainted with but was sure was in there somewhere. I pushed on, rear ending a few in front, hoping I’d be lucky enough to be top of the line when she called ‘next’. I even let Nancy Regan ahead of me, over to the other one serving beside her. I racked up my best attempt at a smile as I made the final leg over to the counter, to her sweet voice, her perfect skin and, as it turned out, her narkiness.
‘A bank draft?’ she asked, like I’d just produced my penny jar for counting. ‘We don’t do bank drafts after three.’
Even with that thick head on her, she was still beautiful. Light-brown curly hair with little wisps of red through it that matched her lipstick. White milky skin. Chocolate freckles scattered over the bridge of her scrunched-up nose, as if she’d only stood at the mirror that morning painting on their perfection. Eyes as blue as a clear Meath summer sky.
‘Just in time, so.’ I nodded at the wall behind her. ‘Your clock there says a minute to.’
‘That’s slow,’ she replied, not even bothering to look.
‘You’re new?’ I tried.
She let her eyes linger on me for a second then looked down at my book and docket, her red lips gathering in a good juicy pout. She frowned, held the docket up, then down, squinting even harder at each new angle. I shifted about, wondering what I’d misspelt now.
‘Is that a T or a C?’ she asked, pushing the slip back across, her pink nail pointing to the cause of her distress. Her nose was scrunched up like the unwanted Sunday paper my mother used to feed the range.
‘C. Con Dolan. It’s to be made out to Con Dolan.’
‘A C?’ she said, her voice rising with the incredulity of it all. ‘It looks more like a T.’
‘Ton’s the brother. I don’t owe him a thing.’
For my efforts, I received the tiniest of grins. I ran a proud hand through the big head of hair I had on me, back then. And beamed my broadest smile, hoping she’d notice. But to my disappointment, her head dropped back to her work.
After she’d finished correcting my handwriting, she got off her chair with a big sigh, to go sort the draft.
‘I’ll have to check if the manager is still about.’
Off she went. I watched her small little waist and her skirt swish about her shapely legs. Why did the pretty ones have to be such hard work, I wondered, like the man of immense experience I surely wasn’t, as I settled in for the next five minutes, my elbows up on the cold marble counter, having a gander behind me, seeing who might be in.
‘Was he over in Hartigan’s?’ I asked, when she finally returned. ‘He’s fierce fond of that snug.’
Another small smile. But this one was wounded and sad. Her ferocity gone. I tried to find her eyes to read what had happened but she refused to raise them. She fumbled with the paperwork again before stopping, taking a breath and saying: